Resource Tag: JUDAISM

This booklet provides general information on bereavement & funeral customs in different religions & cultures, including: the Blackfoot Confederacy, Buddhism, China, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Eastern Orthodox, Hinduism, Hutterite, Muslim, Jehovah Witness, Judaism, Mennonite, Protestant, Roman Catholic, & Sikhism. A glossary defines a number of terms associated with bereavement & funerals.

This article describes a bereavement support group for Jewish survivors of suicide.

The author discusses suicides which occurred in Germany at the end of World War II. He states the motivations of individuals dying by suicide were various & multi-faceted but what they had in common was a general feeling of insecurity & the lack of a future perspective. This article focuses on contemporary representations of suicide […]

Contrary to Durkheim’s theory of suicide during wartime, the Netherlands had high suicide rates in 1940 & 1945. To explain these findings, the authors propose the social integration theory, according to which, people who expect to be excluded from society are more likely to die by suicide. This idea is examined using individual-level data on […]

This article re-examines Jewish responses towards Nazi racism by studying suicides among German Jews. The author’s purpose is two-fold: first, asking what motivated these suicides & secondly, how far, if at all, Jewish suicides can be considered a form of resistance towards Nazism & to what extent they were acts of despair & hopelessness. (129 […]

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This document is intended to be used both as a teaching tool for & an aid to dialogue & discussion about physician-assisted suicide (PAS) & voluntary active euthanasia (VAE) in the context of Judaism. It presents an overview of how Jewish tradition & contemporary Jewish thought look at the issues of PAS & VAE. The […]

Published in “Back to the Future: Refocusing the Image of Suicide,” ed. by J L McIntosh

This paper reviews the development of the Suicide Opinion Questionnaire (SOQ) & its application to cross-cultural contexts. The author argues that in spite of some inherent problems, the SOQ remains relevant to further research in this area. (27 refs)

An earlier version of this article was published in Omega, v.46, no.4, (2002-2003).

This chapter outlines a theory of suicidal terrorism in the broad sense of the term, that is, including all manifestations of self- & other-directed aggression in the name of absolute truth (i.e., mass suicide, suicidal homicides, homicidal suicides, & passive-aggressive phenomena). The core of the author’s argument is that suicidal terrorism is a possible outcome […]

For commentary on this article, please see SIEC #2004-1074

For the original article by W Bailey & L Stein, please see SIEC #2004-1073

In 1903, Otto Weininger published a book “Sex and Character,” that may have led to an epidemic of suicide in young, educated Jewish women. The purpose of this essay is to alert researchers that a better example of a book leading to an epidemic of suicide may exist. (3 refs)

For the original article by A Abdel-Khalek, please see SIEC #2004-1278

This article explores the question: May Jews assist others in commiting suicide or request that others assist them in their own suicides? The medical & legal contexts for this question are discussed, & Jewish theological & legal grounds for opposing suicide & assisted suicide are presented. Additional arguments for retaining the traditional prohibition are presented, […]

This article explores the problem of physician-assisted death in the context of Jewish law. Part 1 addresses Jewish perspectives on living as a background to understanding Jewish law’s rules about dying. Part 2 identifies the essential Jewish law rules proscribing the taking, & prescribing the preservation, of life. Part 3 focuses on Jewish law doctrines […]

Part 1 of this article deals with the tension between Divine & human healing in the Bible & the Talmud. Part 2 focuses on the halakhic status of medical practice &, in particular, the question of whether or not it constitutes the fulfillment of an independent halakhic obligation (mitzvah) in Jewish life. Part 3 is […]

This article consists of portions of an incomplete manuscript & references for further exploration on the problem of assisted suicide & euthanasia in a Jewish context. Topics addressed include suffering; suicide & murder in the Jewish tradition; patient’s rights & living wills; the definition of “being alive”; & duties regarding medical & general ethics.

The author reviews “A Philosophy of Hope: an Antidote to the Suicidal Pathology of Western Civilization,” by K Kaplan & M Schwartz, in which they attempt to trace the Greco-Roman view of death by suicide, & argue that the Jewish Biblical world view offers a solution for suicide prevention. The current author finds that regardless […]

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